Call for Papers: 

“How Children’s Culture Fights Adult Authoritarians; or, Improvising Against the Machine”

American Studies Association, Chicago, Oct. 22-25, 2026

As the regime dismantles the systems upon which children (and all of us) depend, the cultures of childhood are reminding us how play, improvisation, and humor can be tools of resistance. Trump and his lackeys defund public education, attack public libraries, and undermine public health. RFK Jr.’s anti-vax lunacy is putting a generation of young people at risk. In response, from Portland to New York, activists have deployed elements and materials of children’s culture to expose the lies and cruelty of the administration’s policies. Recognizable figures from popular children’s media have popped up at ICE protests, with activists  dressing as Pikachu, unicorns, and Spongebob Squarepants. Protest signs that revise Mary Poppins’ “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” to “Super-callous fragile racist sexist Nazi POTUS” have also appeared in public spaces. Children themselves have engaged in political discourse, from viral TikToks to school walkouts. This panel invites papers that address this  desire for imaginative, non-violent modes of encountering state-violence, enabled by materials, media, or locations associated with childhood. 

What dominant narratives of childhood are being strengthened and disrupted through these tactics? What does it mean for adults to draw on materials associated with childhoods to enact their politics in public? What does it mean for children to not draw on these messages to enact their own political messages in public? Are children improvising and enacting other modes of protest that invite spectators to imagine new forms of childhood agency, political engagement, and citizenship? To what extent does the protest feature improvisation that invites participants’ agency, and to what extent does it stage a planned appropriation of figural ideas of the child?

This panel invites submissions that consider the role of children’s culture in publics, from protests to courtrooms, from print to visual media.  We welcome submissions from a range of disciplines that consider how adults utilize children’s cultures, how children themselves are participating in sociopolitical dialogue on a range of issues, and how the improvisational nature of some protest, disruption, and discourse speaks to children and childhood.

Please submit a 300-word abstract and 2-page CV by February 15 to Philip Nel <philnel@ksu.edu>